2012-08-18

But we aren't done yet. First we have the shameless advertising for the movie, then the movie itself. Then we have to go back and give proper video versions of 1-10, and leave these silly 640x360 XviD videos in the past (aside from the shameless advertising that isn't really worth watching anyway).

Also expect some patches abound for 12-26, if only to update the font size to readable (the original style was scaled against said 640x360 videos and not enough thought went into the change to full anamorphic ED) and to swap to HeatMetal's translation of the OP.

Then, at last, a nice complete batch.

But if you have been watching along, and aren't too worried about the past, you can now finally finish the second Heisei era Masked Rider show; the cornerstone of the majority of its decade, without having to put up with the horrors of Cruel Angel Productions and BrownRanger's collective incompetence.

2012-08-14

2012-08-13

And with this, only one disc remains. It acts as a continuous arc, so look forward to that. Remember back when Masked/Kamen Rider shows didn't slavishly adhere to two episode story arcs? Good times, eh?

2012-08-10

2012-08-09

Welcome to Volume 11, second of three five episode discs. Welcome to probably the most important episode of the series. And, finally, welcome to by far the greatest victim of DVDShrink's tyranny.

You may notice that this is by a wide margin the largest episode yet. Why? Because this episode is full of grain. Not wheat or corn however, but noise that was intended at some point to approximate film grain. As the show was filmed digitally, this was always fake, but even fake grain stands up poorly to MPEG-2 compression. Recompression with half the bitrate results in nearly unwatchable garbage; averaged out blocks dancing as far as the eye can see.

In an attempt to salvage the video quality and deliver the best approximate of the original experience, the scenes that included this fake grain have been aggressively smoothed, and then even more grain layered over the top. This new grain is larger and even less like true film grain than the original, but it has the benefit of obscuring blocks that averaged out, making it merely look low detail behind the wall of grain. x264 is very capable of preserving such grain, but it comes at a price: bitrate.

It was at this point that we realized the true depths of the horrors some anonymous Japanese person loosed upon the world by running these last three discs through DVDShrink. May god have no mercy on his soul.

2012-08-05

By the way, do not believe the lies wikipedia has told you. The events of the TV special contradict this episode entirely, and would have spoiled you on the previous. Neither the special nor the movie are canon, and as such will be released after the end as the bonus features they are.

2012-08-04

Incidentally, this marks the first episode of volume 10, which is the first of three five episode discs, and therefore also a sharp downturn in video quality. It'll be a little while before it's painfully obvious though.

If anybody has more money than sense and wants to contribute things, proper DVD9 rips of volumes 10-12 (nobody needs/wants money or to hold onto physical goods of this) would be a very good place to start. The first nine volumes are bitrate starved in places, but nowhere near as pressingly.